Inner Landscape
by Javanyet
Summary: A new psych evaluation program at the precinct has Nick very very nervous. Cold-shower alert in the final chapter.
1. Chapter 1

"Mandated overtime."

"New task force."

"Some dumbass new testing regulations."

"Maybe she got promoted and we're getting a _new_ captain."

"Great, I just finished breaking her in."

Finally Nick had to laugh at his partner. The roll call meeting called by Captain Cohen had raised no end of rumor and speculation, all of it based on other rumor and speculation, some reaching back before Nick and Schanke had even arrived in the precinct. Nick and Schanke were settled in the rear corner of the room, swapping assumptions as the other detectives assembled and engaged in the same activity. By the time Natalie arrived and sat next to Nick, the air was thick with a hybrid of expectations.

"I heard they're shutting us down because business is off," Natalie offered brightly.

Schanke smirked as he inhaled his second donut. "You heard that from a bunch of stiffs? They're just trying to get your hopes up."

Nick peered around his companions so he could the hallway outside. "Well she's coming out of her office now, let's just wait and see what she has to say."

Natalie gave him a poke in the arm. "You're no fun at all, are you?"

"Someone at home would disagree," Nick punctuated the statement with a sly smile and an arched eyebrow.

Now Natalie pinched him, hard.

"OUCH!"

"Boo hoo, see if 'someone at home' can make it all better, wise guy."

Captain Cohen and an attractive brunette walked took their places at the front of the room. Cohen waited patiently for a moment or two as the those assembled continued to buzz with conversation, then loudly cleared her throat. Silence.

"Thanks to all of you who came in on your off time for this meeting, it won't take long. I want you all to meet Angela Johnson." She indicated the woman on her left, who nodded and smiled in acknowledgment. "Dr. Johnson's a psychologist who specializes in job-related issues." Now, confused/curious silence. "Command is launching a new program aimed at keeping on top of any stress-related problems that might arise with our officers in the field. A particular focus, initially at least, will be in the areas of homicide and sex crimes. Ours is one of several homicide units in the city to be selected for the pilot portion of the program. The first step will be to establish an intake file on all field personnel, to provide a baseline for future reference. Dr. Johnson will be interviewing each of you according to a schedule that will be posted by tomorrow on the bulletin board here."

Schanke raised his hand and asked, "But Captain, don't we already have a company shrink? We all filled out those million-page evaluations last year. And every time somebody fires a weapon we get interviewed, and if we're into a really ugly case we can request a sit-down about it."

Now Angela Johnson spoke. "Yes, detective, but we all know not everyone is forthcoming about their difficulties. Especially in your little corner of police work, there's a tendency to be 'okay', and just push aside the effects the job might be having on you. This new program is intended to take the decision out of your hands, a sort of end-run around denial. Which you well know in your job can be a terminal affliction. We're going to develop a more hands-on approach, to keep an eye on things a written evaluation just can't address."

"Not that any of _you_ would have that problem," Cohen added somewhat sardonically, "but think of it as taking one more responsibility off your plate."

Nick shifted uneasily in his chair and Natalie cut a look at him. He'd never taken advantage of the "company shrink" for obvious reasons, and on the very few occasions he'd had to shoot anyone he'd been able to submit an evaluation from a member of the Community whose "mortal job" was as a licensed social worker and psychotherapist. Night appointments available, of course. Apparently that avenue of avoidance had just been eliminated. Already the wheels in Nick's head were turning rapidly, organizing logical objections and failing that, a plausible psychological profile. Maybe Brinkmeyer, his up-til-now ringer, could help him with that. Either way it was going to be a rough ride.

Dr. Johnson took the floor to elaborate a bit on the planned interviews. "As Captain Cohen mentioned, I'll be conducting intake interviews with each of you. We're not trying to pry into your personal lives or hunt for weak links in the department. This will simply give you all a baseline file to compare against any future evaluations, which at this point are planned to be conducted routinely once a year at the same time as your performance review. While it's not a standardized test the interview will address the same issues with everyone, only what you tell me will differ." She paused to scan the room for reaction. "I see a lot of doubtful faces out there. Let me assure you that this is a two-way street. It's a chance for you to let someone know what's giving you trouble at work and how you think it can be minimized."

"Well if you learn how to minimize murder, that would be a plus," Natalie quipped.

The doctor laughed. "I'd love to be able to put you all in a new line of work. But for now, we're just going to try to make the one you have easier for you, and easier for you to do better. Captain Cohen has a generous supply of my cards. If you have any particular questions or concerns please feel free to contact me; for the next six months I belong to you. "

"I'd be careful who you say _that_ to," Schanke cracked. The doctor and Captain Cohen both raised eyebrows. "Not me!" Schanke waved his left hand in self defense, "I'm a happily married man! I meant some of the less socially sensitive types that work here." His colleagues glared at him as one. "Uh, never mind."

Nick leaned over to whisper, "Smart move. Quit while you're behind."

"So how you gonna handle this?" Natalie asked Nick when they'd walked down the hall, out of earshot of the others.

"I have no idea yet."

"Well it's not like your cognition is so different, I mean aside from your highly attuned senses and hypnotic talents it functions pretty much like everyone else's. And you internalize all the baggage of your experiences pretty much the same was as anyone else, don't you?"

Nick made a face. "Except my 'baggage' is older than Methuselah. And my formative experiences are somewhat out of the ordinary."

Natalie nodded, getting his drift. "And most people's fight or flight response doesn't include fangs."

"Or actual flight."

"I see your point."

"All manner of reactions and memories are triggered by therapy, Nat, and any adequate therapist can see when that's happening. Something tells me that Dr. Johnson is much more than adequate."

"I wish I knew what to tell you. At least I'm the only other one here that knows about you, and I'm not part of the project because I work in the lab."

"Thanks for the reassurance but as silver linings go that's not exactly blinding." Unease was beginning to segue into genuine distress.

"Well it's not as if she's going to be using truth serum, Nick. And she'll be talking to everyone about their work."

"And our relationships with our colleagues. And relationships _outside_ of work. You know it's all part of the picture, or they wouldn't bother with those spouse support groups." To which Maura pointedly did _not _belong. Why bother when your man _can't_ be killed in the line of duty? At least that's what Maura always said, brushing aside any other supports the group might offer.

Just then Schanke arrived to interrupt the uncertainty with his own kvetching. "Not enough we get shot at, lied to, and led on wild goose chases all over the city trying to clean up after man's inhumanity to man, but now we gotta get shrunk. When I tell Myra she's gonna give me twenty pages of reference notes to fill in the home life picture. At least _you_ have a nice uncomplicated happy life outside of 'our little corner of police work'."

Nick shot a look at Natalie that was half irony, half fear. "Yeah, Schank, lucky me."

* * *

"How would you characterize our relationship?" 

Maura was poring over classified ad email responses at the dining room table. Vargo had decided to move on from Raven, and word of the available position had gone out in the Community, which was no big deal, and in an ad in the Sun that was giving Maura fits because there was no way of knowing if the ad responses were from "fellow travelers" or mortals. It wasn't as if she could slip the question into the interview. "Bud or O positive?" Maura muttered under her breath as she tried to interpret telling information such as former home addresses (Eastern Europe might sound stereotypical, but it was a giveaway) and employment history. Janette was trying to take advantage of the computer age. Tackling Human Resources was a heightened challenge when the immortals wouldn't identify themselves in the online messages forwarded by the paper to Raven's computer, and the mortals couldn't be informed of the nature of some of their coworkers (and customers). She wondered idly if vampire computer cookies were coded differently. Maybe Aristotle would know.

"Huh?" She barely raised her head to acknowledge Nick's question. In addition to the hell of selecting a replacement, she was cursing Vargo's departure because he was her most reliable "enforcer", you should pardon the expression.

Nick was lounging on the sofa, sipping his evening meal. "I said, how would you characterize our relationship?"

Maura looked up from the too-small print in front of her to stare at Nick as if he'd asked her "Do these pants make my butt look big?" Her voice betrayed utter confusion. "Where the hell did _that_ come from?"

"Answer the question first." He didn't want to trigger her hatred of psychobabble, which would of course lead to an uninterrupted diatribe laced with satirical shrinkspeak.

"Well, I guess, uh…" she was lost. "It just is what it is, I guess. We cross the mortal divide, our circle of friends and family would raise Charles Addams from the grave with pen in hand." She could see from the look on his face he wasn't amused, so she tried to be more analytical. "We live together and support each other's neuroses, we love each other, we have sex in ways that Kinsey couldn't have hallucinated on acid…"

Nick stopped her before she went on a real roll. "I can see this is a wasted question."

Maura abandoned her work (gratefully, as it happened) and planted herself next to Nick on the sofa. "Well what do you want to _hear_, anyway? Have you been watching Oprah or what?" she demanded.

Nick doubled over in the crash position, arms locked over his head and growled in exasperation. "Just once," he grumbled, "just _once_ can you give me a straight answer to a question? Just for _variety_?"

Maura leaned down to peek between his knees at him. "Well maybe there's your answer. Maybe our relationship is a futile attempt at nonstop standup to counteract our annoying jobs. Which might _succeed_ by the way, if you'd only loosen up a little more." After going blind playing "Vampire…not a vampire" for the past couple of hours she was not in the mood to be serious for another moment. Nick sat up and regarded her with something resembling desperation.

"You're loose enough for _both_ of us _and_ our extended Addams Family. I just asked a question, Sweet, would it _kill_ you to answer it?"

Now Maura groaned in frustration. Of all the people to ask a navel-gazing question of… well she supposed she'd be the one he'd ask this particular one. "I'm sorry, Bats, this is so out of left field I guess it must be really important for some reason you're _about_ to explain to me…" she looked hopefully at him, "right?"

He explained. The program, the purpose, and his enormous trepidation.

"Oh swell, they're gonna get you 'in touch with yourself'. Shit, isn't it enough you get slapped around by the job, now you gotta _analyze_ every slap." She stopped herself when she noticed the look on Nick's face. Now wasn't the time for one of her anti-psych speeches. She sighed, and offered, " Well I suppose you could just focus on the same stuff anyone else would… I mean we have the same shit to deal with as anyone else at the end of the day. All that living together stuff like shitty moods, not bringing work home, how much to share, whether or not to just try and dump it outside and create a little oasis of denial here. And all that love and trust shit that gets beat senseless by dealing with posers and freaks and…" she felt herself spinning off on her own job.

"Traumatic blood loss…" Nick interjected to disrupt her tangent.

"Ha, ha. You know what I mean."

"Yeah, but everything connects to something else, doesn't it?" He sighed. "I guess I'll come up with something."

Maura thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Well here's a thought. How about the truth?"

Nick glared at her. "Now you're not funny at all."

"I'm not joking. You're a smart guy, you can dance around the delicate details." He didn't look convinced, so she slid closer and put her arms around him. "Bats, your whole _existence_ has required a certain, ah, gift for euphemism. It's not lying, it's a matter of definition. Instead of saying 'I drink Maura's blood when we're doing it' you say 'our love life is a bit exotic'. Somehow I think the tiny details aren't what's important anyway." He looked uncertain, so she took him by the shoulders and shook him. "You _worry_ too much. They're not gonna want a verbal videotape of la vida Nick, okay? And to answer your question," she kissed his ear, "I'd characterize our relationship as _just right_." Maura could feel Nick relax a little, and getting even a tentative smile out of him was a great relief. This really was tying him in knots, she realized. He slouched down a bit and laid his head on her shoulder, eyes sliding shut as she ran slow fingers through his hair.

"Y'know," she mused, "it might not be such a bad thing, really. You've always struggled with the same sorts of things for centuries, maybe now's your chance to look at them in some clear sort of way, not just beating your head against them."

"I can't exactly tell her that I'm trying to undo 800 years of vampire transgressions and their emotional reverberations."

"_Seven_ hundred," she corrected. "And it's the transgression part that's important, and the reverberations, the guilt trips and obsession with making it up, those are what's gotten in your way. And ours, sometimes. Millions of garden-variety beer-swilling mortals encounter the same shit. You'll figure out a way to make this work. And you know you can bring the 'leftovers' home to me."

Nick was lying across her lap now, smiling a bit more. "Well either way I'm gonna be dragged down my 'personal highway' as the new age types call it…"

"Think of it as a 'guided tour of your inner landscape'."

"Not bad. Maybe _you_ should set up a practice."

"You couldn't afford me. You're _way_ too fucked up." Rewarded with a scowl, she left Nick for a moment and returned with a stack of her email printouts. "Now tell me if you recognize any of these names…"

* * *

"Relax, detective. This isn't an interrogation." 

Nick shifted this way and that, trying to get comfortable in what under ordinary conditions would be a very comfortable chair. Suddenly aware of his fidgeting, he forced himself to settle in one position.

"Sorry. This is uncharted territory for me. I'm not what you'd call effusive with strangers."

"Well you're in the same boat as everyone else, if that's any help. I've found police officers in general and homicide detectives in particular tend to keep their own counsel or limit the range of their 'sharing', to use a worn-out cliché." Noticing Nick's appreciation of that comment, she added, "I don't deal in psychobabble, detective. This is going to be as down-to-earth and practical as you didn't imagine it would be. That's why they hired me and not some Yellow Pages shrink. Your commanders downtown knew that would be a waste of time and budget, considering the clientele."

Loosening just a tad, Nick had to laugh in acknowledgment of that truth. "Yeah, nobody can 'affect manage' like a detective."

Dr. Johnson looked up from scanning his personnel file. "So, detective,"

"Nick. Just Nick."

"Just Angela, then." Nick was privately grateful she didn't use Maura's occasional nickname for him. Angela leaned over and extended her hand, shaking Nick's firmly. "Nice to meet you Nick. I'm going to make this as painless as possible for everyone."

"You were about to say…"

"Yes." She began to recite the facts and figures. "You've been with Metro for six years, ten months here in this precinct. All with the same partner. Citations from the city, commendations for bravery and extraordinary duty, just three suspects killed in the line of duty. Never been seriously injured in the line of duty… seven languages." That obviously impressed her. "Degrees from…" she trailed off as she ran through his history prior to Toronto. "Well you know all of this already."

Only recently, Nick admitted silently. Aristotle had done well by him.

"You've never spoken to the department counselor," she noted, now looking Nick in the eye.

He shrugged. "Never felt the need, I guess. Had a private therapist do my post-shoot evaluations."

"So I see. 'Detective Knight displays no residual emotional issues aside from those considered typical for someone in his profession.'" She closed the file and was silent for a moment. "Everything here indicates you're a very good cop, and a very well adjusted one. No disciplinary hearings except for a few procedural issues. You've occasionally 'gone your own way'…"

"It's hard for me to take 'let it go' for an answer when I'm convinced otherwise."

"You also seem to have volunteered for many of the most dangerous cases and reported for some very hazardous calls when you were off duty."

"I'm a cop. That doesn't stop when the shift's over."

She considered this. "To be honest, that could be considered a bit reckless or self-destructive, going out of the way to put yourself into harm's way. _Could_ be, if you'd ever been wounded in the line of duty."

Nick didn't know how to respond. "I'm not suicidal if that's what you're getting at."

"But there are often other reasons for jumping in where others fear to tread." She stopped there. "Well those are things for a later time. You weren't always a homicide detective, were you?"

"No. In the UK I was a regular beat cop. It was my partner who got me interested in homicide, he was doing some additional duty investigating a series of related murders. I guess I was just attracted by the puzzle of it all."

"Puzzle?"

"Well as you work a case and get closer to 'whodunit', you learn more and more about what it was in the killer that made him, or her, choose to kill. The more cases you work over time, the more you see the choices fall into certain categories. At first it seemed random but after awhile they started to resemble each other."

"That's interesting… what did you discover?"

"Probably what you know already, people kill for greed, jealousy, revenge. But I found the most common denominator to be control." He answered her questioning look. "Not control in an egotistical sense, but in the sense that most people see themselves as having only the most tenuous control over their lives and how they're affected. It's all a mess of variables pulling or pushing them along, most of which are beyond our control. Murderers, when they decide to kill, are re-establishing that control by removing what they see as the key variable. The one who's going to turn them in, the one who's preventing them from getting what they want or need, the one who's going to disrupt their well-ordered existence by leaving them. Like that."

"And what might determine which individuals might reach that moment of identifying the 'key variable' sooner than others? Or not at all?"

Nick smiled ruefully. "Well when I figure that out we can all go into that other line of work you mentioned that first day."

"But there seems to be an element of control you've overlooked… that ending someone's life is the ultimate act of control over that person. An act of ownership, even. That in a world full of uncontrollable variables, killing another not only eliminates that variable, it assumes ownership of that person's control over themselves. And that brings power into the equation."

"You might have a point there." He hoped he'd successfully hidden exactly how good a point he thought it was.

"Well Nick, your powers of analysis seem to threaten to side track us here. Let's get back to more basic things… you like your job, and you're good at it."

His inner sigh of relief nearly deafened him. "The answers are yes, and I work hard at it." The rest of the interview continued in mundane fashion, establishing the facts of his life but not elaborating on them. That would come later, and he wasn't looking forward to it. This doctor was perceptive even for her profession, and Nick found it troubling how easily he'd been persuaded to "open up".


	2. Chapter 2

Nick snatched the book out of Maura's hands when he got home just after 7 o'clock. Since the first interview was on his official night off, he was due out at 6pm. He was a little late, but his schedule often ran weird so Maura didn't even notice. It was Monday; she was spending the evening buried in T.C. Boyle.

"Hey!" she protested and tried to grab the book back. She was bumming it tonight, hair in a sloppy ponytail, wearing sweatpants and one of Nick's old holey department gym shirts, and well-slumped into the sofa.

"Get jazzed up, Sweet, we're going out." He looked like a man on a mission.

Of course she assumed he meant Raven. "Jeez, Nick, if I have to look at that place even once before Wednesday night I'm gonna do something desperate."

"Really?" he replied with mock distrust, "Exactly _who's_ been taking you to the Grand lately?"

"The Grand? Very funny." The Grand hotel was so posh Maura went broke just _thinking_ about it. It had a restaurant to die for, and the lounge featured dancing to the most amazing musicians, jazz trios and vocalists who just blew through town en route to world tours. If she was gonna be found murdered somewhere, she'd pick the Grand and at least finish with some style. As for any other activity, it was beyond even fantasy. "Gimme back my book, Diamond Jim."

He held it behind his back and dropped it on the coffee table. "Uh-uh. I've booked a Jacuzzi suite until Thursday."

She sat up. Was he nuts? He had to be jerking her around… she'd bitched a little recently how they never went anywhere but Raven and she was sick of dancing to Goth death metal. "Nice try, smartass, but you know I work Wednesdays."

He stood over her with a smug expression. "Not this week you don't. I talked to Janette, you have Wednesday off. And I talked to the captain, and _I _have Wednesday off too."

"Cut it out, will you? The Grand, gimme a break. If this is about last week, look I'm sorry but sometimes a change of scenery would be nice. No reason to make a big deal of it."

"Living with a cop has made you _so_ suspicious," Nick shook his head and clucked disapprovingly, then pulled something out of his wallet. "Will these convince you?" He handed her a pair of tickets for an evening with Andrea Marcovicci on Wednesday night at the Grand, a stunning cabaret singer who rarely set foot outside the Rainbow Room in Manhattan. "An intimate evening of smoky jazz, romantic ballads, and dancing until 3am." Oh. My. God. He was serious. Then he showed her something else. A key card to a skyline Jacuzzi suite. The logo was unmistakable. She reached for the card but he put it back in his wallet.

"Oh no, I'm hanging onto this thanks."

"Safekeeping?" she asked, put out.

Nick leaned down and murmured seductively, "_Bait_. Now get a move on, drag out all that chic couture that Janette had made for you. For the next three nights we're gonna remember what it's like to live like royalty."

"Uh, only one of us has something to 'remember', remember?"

He took her hand and pulled her to her feet. "You'll catch on. You're a quick study."

Still she stood flat-footed and staring. "Nick, really what brought this on? This has gotta cost a thousand a night. Not _including_ dinner for one."

He responded with a dismissive shrug. "They don't call it 'The Grand' for nothing. Don't worry, I'm flush this week." With a couple hundred million at his disposal, "flush" was a criminal understatement. Maura still gaped at him like Bambi in the headlights. He slipped his arms around her waist and gave her a gentle shake. "Okay, you're right. This isn't exactly a typical Monday night chez nous."

Something dawned in Maura's brain. Duh. "This is about that shrink thing, isn't it?" Rather than sounding suspicious, a smile was taking root.

"You got me, I confess," he raised his hands in mock surrender, but Maura pulled them around her again. "We were doing the personnel file stuff, basics, my service record, how long have I been with Metro, where I live," he paused now to kiss her, "who I live with…and of course I told her about how we met, and how a confirmed bachelor was seduced into cohabitative bliss in mere days."

"_Hours_, as I recall," Maura corrected. "But shit, you didn't tell her _how_, did you?" It was too crazy to think he'd spilled the real story.

A quick smile of reassurance. "I 'danced around the delicate details', I promise. But talking about when we met, and about that Christmas," here Maura was frankly horrified.

"You told her about _Christmas_, like flying to the CN tower, like me doing you on the living room rug?"

"Hey, you're the one that said 'why not tell the truth'," Nick teased mercilessly. Maura was so on the edge of freaking out that he immediately admitted, "_No_, I didn't. But she asked if it seemed difficult for you to fit into my world, so I told the truth. I said you seemed like 'my world' was waiting for you all along, and you for it. No, we didn't get any deeper than that. She's rather good at keeping things focused."

"That's a relief."

Nick was pulling Maura up the stairs. "So… here I was thinking about how she phrased that… you fitting into _my_ world and not vice-versa, because after all that's what happened even if the good doctor hasn't a clue why. You moved in here, and into my life, and even if you didn't have to leave anything behind to do it, it suddenly occurred to me the adjustment has been mostly yours. Aside from making room in the refrigerator."

"And so you figured it was time for a little payback?"

Nick dropped her hand and sauntered into the bedroom, hauling out his oxblood leather suitcase and selecting from among his more elegant clothes. "Y'know, maybe I should just find someone whose appreciation for the warm and fuzzy things is a bit less… pedestrian." The barest smile on his face, he suggeseted, "Maybe Janette…"

Maura rushed him and gave him a shove. "In your dreams, pal! I can _learn_ to adapt to a little warm and fuzzy. I can even probably learn to be a romantic fool, with the right guidance."

Now Nick swept an elegant bow and kissed her hand. "It would be my pleasure to provide it, my love."

So a couple of hours later Maura stood gawking like a hick in the lobby of the Grand as Nick completed their hotel registration and gave the bell captain instructions regarding their luggage and his portable electric cooler.

"We aren't to be disturbed for any reason… we both typically work nights and sleep during the day. Special housekeeping arrangements will be required," and she saw Nick slip the desk manager a wad of bills, "for which I'm glad to compensate the staff." God, he was _good _at this. Though she was well familiar with the upper-crust periods in Nick's history, Maura had never had much occasion to see the aristocratic side of him. Her life had been lived in a much more working-class setting and though she'd always considered herself fairly adaptable to any situation but was beginning to feel hopelessly outclassed by the ambience alone. Afraid to drift off and get sucked into staring at the fabulous décor and furniture and guests as if she were at the zoo, Maura stood by patiently until Nick came away from the desk .

"_Now_ you can have it." He handed her the key card.

"Guess this means the trap has been sprung," she used the card in the suite's private elevator.

"You know it, mortal," Nick rumbled in her ear as the doors slid shut and they were glided upstairs. Next night was new moon, and as always "that time of the month" made Maura a little screwy, and Nick extremely horny.

Incredibly their luggage awaited them already, Nick's cooler plugged in by the ¾ size mahogany (_mahogany_?) paneled refrigerator. Unable to resist, Maura opened the fridge. It was stocked with champagne. Moët. _Six_ bottles.

"_Damn_," Maura breathed.

"No sense giving you a reason to wander off."

Skipping to his side with a grin she declared, "Are you kidding? You had me from 'Andrea Marcovicci'." Then she took off to check out the bedroom.

"Holy _shit_!" Nick heard her cry of amazement, and followed to see her standing bug-eyed in the middle of the desperately luxurious bedroom. The bed, referred to in the hotel literature as an "ambassador king", was even bigger than their enormous one at home.

"This isn't a _bed_," she gasped, and turned an astonished face to him, "this is fucking _Nebraska_!" She paced around the edge as if measuring. "Do you think they'll send up a golf cart to get me to the edge if I have to pee at night?" Abruptly she seized Nick by the belt buckle and tackled him, barely managing to drag him to the middle of the silk brocade bedspread. "You are _so_ gonna get laid tonight, detective…"

He lay smiling up at her as she straddled him but stopped her hands as they impatiently began pulling his shirt open.

"I got a Jacuzzi for a reason, Sweet."

"Well don't worry, I'm plenty clean… and you _know _where my hands have been," she tried to burrow into his pants with one hand while the other unbuckled his belt. Nick rolled her off of him easily and pinned her in turn.

"The housekeeping arrangements I made were special, not _exceptional_. As in, they don't provide an incinerator for the linens."

Maura stopped wrestling and made a thoughtful face. "Uhm, yeah. Good point. You're so smart. How did you _get_ so smart?"

In unison they recited, "Centuries of practice," and dissolved in laughter. Maura stretched out in Nick's arms, fully clothed, practically purring with contentment as she looked around the room.

"So this is what they call 'warm fuzzies', huh? Not too shabby I guess."

"I think you'll adjust."

They made love in the Jacuzzi, and Maura nearly lost her mind as the rushing water surrounded them with heat and mist and an energy that seemed to multiply the pleasure they took in each other. It felt like weightlessness, being suspended by nothing but sensation; after endless permutations of caressing and kisses and slippery passionate wrestling, after Nick had exhausted every possible movement and position to explore in their new element, Maura dropped her head back into the water and pulled his face to her neck with a muted whimper, "_Now_…" He needed little encouragement. As had become his habit, instead of aggressively biting into his favorite soft place he pressed his open mouth to the pulse that beat there and enjoyed her gasping sigh as his fangs descended, his rhythmic drawing from her matching his movements within her, the gripping sensation of hot velvet a renewed astonishment every time. Finally he allowed himself, finally, to complete the circle of sharing that was their orgasm and her blood. He held them tightly together as her grip on him weakened, as it always did, this time whirling them slowly through the artificial turbulence of water and steam as the storm they conjured between them settled into sweet peace. She rested against him then, supported by warm water that was almost, but not quite, equal to the security of their embrace.

Nick maneuvered them against the built-in bench at the edge of the Jacuzzi and switched off the jets. "Nice…" he murmured against Maura's cheek.

"Mmm, yeah," her voice was a bit weaker than his.

"All right?" he asked, concerned he'd taken too much. She turned easily in the water to curl around him.

"_So_ all right…" she rubbed her mouth against his shoulder and studied the water, now calm but for the ripples their small movements created. "No oral report tonight, I guess…" She loved working him up again with her mouth and hands, 'her turn' becoming a contest to drive him over the edge at her whim and not his. But there was no way to accommodate that here that wouldn't require rather utilitarian measures, given that they couldn't bloody the bed. Warm and fuzzy may not have been her thing, but strictly clinical would entirely defeat their notion of intimacy.

Maura's ironic comment was almost a relief to Nick. He'd become so accustomed to her 'anti-afterglow' that anything else might have worried him.

"Oh I don't know… how long can you hold your breath?" he playfully scattered some drops of water on her face.

"The way you can hold out, a pearl diver would be dead on arrival." She escaped his arms and floated straight out, resting her chin on her arms at the side of the tub facing the Toronto skyline. "Suppose there's anyone out there with a really powerful telescope?" The unobstructed view of the night sky revealed few buildings within reasonable sight.

"Why go to all that trouble to look at yourself," Nick replied, copying her position next to her. The Jacuzzi room was faced with one-way glass and only permitted an outward view.

"Well if I looked like _you_ I might bother." She turned her head to smile at Nick, reached out and rearranged some of his rapidly-drying blond curls. "you are a righteous eyeful, detective."

"And you, are a righteous _handful_, mortal," he punctuated by moving closer to give her a squeeze.

"Do you have Dr. Johnson's card?" Maura asked idly as Nick moved them gently from side to side. Nick's habit of rocking them took on a whole new dimension in a tubful of warm water, and Maura was feeling sleepy. Nick leaned around to look her in the eye.

"Uh, yeah, why do you ask?"

An impish expression lit her face. "I wanna call and thank her."

In spite of his amusement Nick was unable to wholeheartedly return her smile. "Don't thank her yet, we're barely out of the gate."

For the next two days Nick and Maura relaxed, wandered the night streets along the waterfront, and "experimented" in the Jacuzzi. Andrea Marcovicci's performance exceeded all advertised promises, as did Nick's marathon dance skills.

"It's not as if this is hard stuff," he said in Maura's ear as they slow-danced to an exquisitely sung Moonlight Becomes You.

"Nah, hard stuff starts next Monday." Session two with Dr. Johnson.

"Thanks for reminding me, Sweet," Nick grumped. But he kissed her anyway, and next Monday evaporated from his thoughts.


	3. Chapter 3

"Sorry I missed the appointment yesterday. My partner and I were involved."

"Captain Cohen filled me in. A domestic violence case, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, I don't think I should," Nick wasn't certain of department protocol regarding ongoing cases. Ordinarily they weren't to be discussed, though nothing specific had been mentioned regarding the evaluation interviews. The case she referred to was an ugly one, a nineteen year old girl whose parents had begged the police to intervene in what they knew to be an abusive live-in relationship. Unfortunately they had never witnessed the abuse, their daughter had denied it was happening, and even a "casual visit" to the young woman by Nick and Schanke had failed to gain her trust. In the end she was beaten black and blue and shoved down a flight of stairs, and was pronounced dead at the scene. Understandably the parents were blaming themselves and Metro simultaneously.

"You're cleared to discuss anything with me, Nick. Confidentiality is absolute, I wouldn't even be permitted to testify in court."

"I know that." End of comment.

"Even the best detectives on the force can't 'leave it at the office'. If they could they wouldn't be human." In other circumstances Nick would have found her observation to be blackly humorous. As it was he simply waited impassively for her to continue. "Of course you're not _required_ to discuss such things, either. But everyone takes it somewhere. " Continued silence. "Detective, I'm well aware that the official 'gag rule' regarding ongoing cases is unofficially ignored. Off the record, I support that kind of breach as very necessary. We all know partners share the non-professional issues of a bad case. But it's also true that nine times out of ten people in your position take it home to their _non_ department 'partner'." She noticed Nick's rather private-looking smile. "Yes?"

"Schanke, he calls Maura 'my partner's partner'. So what happens to number ten?"

"Those are the ones we really worry about, the ones that often end up drunk or eating their gun. Do you and your partner share the emotional load of your job on a night like last night?"

"Schanke and me?" He thought for a moment, and was surprised to realize he wasn't sure. "We absorb so much of what happens as it happens, the ugly stuff, the stuff that tends to hang on… not too much talking actually. Sometimes you do, sort of like a reality check, are you as close to the edge as I am and all that. But it's more understood than spoken."

"So what happens to the rest that 'hangs on'? Some things need to be spoken, don't they?"

Another smile, less 'private' this time. "Yeah, if only to hear it out loud so it makes sense. That's when our 'partner's partners' take over, and we take it home. You don't like to do it too much, it can get to be a pretty heavy load no matter how understanding they are. Or maybe especially because of that. You learn to pick your traumas, if you know what I mean, because no amount of talk really does anything besides spreading the ugly around."

"Doesn't that mean sometimes you end up keeping 'ugly' things to yourself?"

"Sometimes. See, detectives' spouses are a lot like detectives, they'll say they're okay and push their own things aside if they think they can help. It gets pretty Byzantine, everyone wrestling with their own demons while spotting someone else with theirs. Everybody wants to make it all better, Schanke and me want it on the job, Myra and Maura want to do it at home. But rule one in this line of work is you can only make it a little better, so the margin between 'a little' and 'all' can add up over time."

"So how's your 'margin'?"

Silence at first, then, "It depends on who you ask."

"I'm asking you. How large a margin between 'a little' and 'all' have you accumulated?"

There was no way Nick could keep the haunted expression from his face, he could only hope the doctor would read only professional issues into it. "The deficit varies."

"So what do you do then, when you've reached the limit you want to unload verbally, but there's too much left to ignore?"

"There's other ways… I don't know. Little things. Listening to music together, just sitting together reading. Other more… personal things. Anything that just lets you be anything but a cop, with someone who doesn't care that you didn't save the world today, who can slow down the hammer you're beating yourself with just by being there when you get home." Suddenly Nick felt a little self-conscious, opening a door to a private room. He added something more mundane, "And dancing. Yeah, dancing seems to work really well." He'd been staring at his hands, and suddenly looked straight at the doctor to gauge if he was making any sense at all or had begun to ramble.

"It sounds like Maura's made a safe place to recover from a hard time."

It sounded like a revelation when she put it like that, even if he knew it all along. "That's a good way to describe it, I think. But we always leave a window open to let the really stubborn stuff escape, if you know what I mean."

"Your service record says you've taken no vacations since joining Metro. Have you never taken a trip, 'gotten away from it all' even for a little while?"

"Well last week we went for a few days at…" he stopped himself. He'd never be able to explain The Grand on a detective's salary. "We went away for a few days. Nice hotel," and how, "music, dancing, time to ourselves, all that."

"A romantic getaway."

In spite of himself Nick laughed out loud, taking Angela by surprise. "Maura isn't exactly the soul of traditional romance," he explained. "She leans more toward the pragmatic, I guess. But it was rejuvenating, no question."

Dr. Johnson had taken a flurry of notes, and seemed to be nodding in approval. _The detective has a primary relationship that aids in providing adequate coping and support mechanisms to compensate for job related stress_, he imagined she was writing. As it happened he wasn't too far off.

"I see one leave of absence, unexplained in your file, nearly six weeks. Followed immediately by an exchange assignment to Boston for another six weeks. Was the leave of absence work related?" She knew that some commanders could be protective of their officers' privacy, not officially noting the circumstances of absences or even reprimands, and Amanda Cohen was definitely one of "some".

"No." He looked away, shifted in his chair. "It was… a private matter." Nick knew she was waiting for elaboration. "It wasn't work related." End of discussion. Rather than press the issue she continued in a different direction.

"Doesn't Maura ever want to get away?" She was trying to determine if this detective's dedication to his job was at the expense of his life outside. Relationships could begin to erode almost unnoticed, affecting an officer's support system, emotional well being, and thus his job performance. She was unprepared for the curt reply from the typically genial detective.

"I'm not the one to say."

"You mean you don't know how she feels about it?"

"I mean I don't speak for her. Maura does go to visit friends in Boston from time to time. She has her own friends, her own job and life separate from mine. We share a circle of friends, but our relationships with them are in some ways rather distinct."

"And this minimizes over-dependence?"

"It makes it unnecessary." She was getting too far into things he simply couldn't afford to explore. In fact their dependence upon each other was of course more complete and inescapable than he could ever make clear without revealing its true nature.

"Nick, most people describe their connections to their loved ones at least partly in terms of emotion, in addition to habits and behaviors. I hear the dynamics of your connection with Maura, but not much else."

"Doctor, Maura and I inhabit each other's lives, and we've made one together. We are inter-reliant, mutually supportive, and completely committed to one another. As for the emotional power of our connection…" he paused, trying to conjure a statement that wouldn't sound evasive. "It's not something that lends itself easily to verbal expression." There. Maura would be proud; his lifelong powers of euphemism were in fine form. "I think we've established the stability of my home life. Can we move on please?"

"Only if I'm convinced that your job has no affect on what therapists like to call your 'primary relationship'. Is that really the case? No conflicts at all at home, not ever? It doesn't matter if _you_ think they relate to work or not."

She was good, he had to give her that. He was doing his smoothest footwork and she wasn't gonna dance. "Yes, Angela, we have 'conflicts', doesn't everyone?" Not usually related to near-death, mortality-driven drug addiction, vampire-assisted revenge murder, he had to admit. "I'm sorry if I'm being difficult but I just don't see the connection."

"Well you have to admit there are some mysteries here… an unexplained six week leave isn't typical, so I have to wonder what the secret is. Personal secrets that link to the job are bad for police business."

Nick straightened himself and tried to keep the edge from his voice. "Okay. You want to know about a six week leave. Like I said, it wasn't work related. I left town with a friend. Just left, to settle some old differences that required my exclusive attention. I didn't tell anyone until after I'd gone. I didn't tell anyone where I went, or why. I didn't even tell Maura, just covered her financially, left a note, and hit the road. It was not the smartest move I've ever made. And I'm not prepared to elaborate further."

"It's odd you left again immediately upon your return."

"Not so odd. After a month of waiting for word from me, Maura left town too. She went to Boston with instructions that nobody was to tell me where she'd gone. An old friend of mine helped set her up. I applied for the exchange program and requested the Boston assignment, and Captain Cohen approved it. There was no professional reason not to, by the way, though she could have sent me to New York or Chicago instead. My post-assignment review was adequate, by the way."

"More than adequate, according to your file." Like every single other thing in his department file.

He didn't respond to the comment but told her, "So here's an example of my job _helping_ my 'primary relationship'. Is that useful as a 'baseline'?" This time his tone bordered on sarcasm.

"I don't think it's necessary to include those details here." She looked at him a moment, and suggested, "Nick, I think we'd better finish early today. I'm sorry if this has upset you."

Oh, shit, was she wondering _more_ things now? "Angela, _I'm_ sorry. I'm not trying to be evasive, there's nothing to be evasive about." Not much. "It's just that I consider my private life to be just that, and keeping it that way helps make it that 'safe place' that you mentioned. It's the inner sanctum, a circle of two, a keep with a wall six feet thick and a mental moat to keep the world at bay. It's not escape, it's not denial, it's a DMZ that lets me, lets _us_, regroup and recover. We do that best together, not by opening the door to third parties, which is why I don't go to the company shrink and she doesn't join the spouse support group. We 'shrink' for each other, and it seems to work even if more professional minds believe otherwise."

She considered this, hand poised to write in her notebook. Then she clicked the pen shut instead and looked Nick in the eye. "Point taken. Keeping ones' own counsel isn't necessarily unhealthy, but in my line of work it tends to raise a red flag. Based on everything I've heard from you, I'm ready to lower it. Next time we'll move on to other things."

Nick thanked her and tried not to dash out the door as he was desperate to do. Schanke was back at his desk finishing some late paperwork.

"Whoa, partner, you look like you just dodged a bullet."

"You have _no_ idea." He fell into his chair.

"Is she _that_ bad? I'm due next week. I think we're gonna overlap."

"No, Schank, it's not her exactly. It's that you find yourself on the edge of saying things you don't intend to say. It's a little unnerving." His partner laughed, not without sympathy.

"Especially for the department clam-up artist. How many more meetings with her you got?"

"No magic number, I don't think," Nick shook his head and shrugged. "Just when you're done, you're done."

"Ain't that the truth." Schanke finished piling his papers in the proper baskets. "Imagine," he mused, "the inner workings of the Knight mind set down on paper." A fake shudder. "Not sure I wanna know."

Nick nodded and smiled ironically as he stood to walk with Schanke out to the garage. "Sometimes it's safer to embrace the mystery, Schank."


	4. Chapter 4

When Nick arrived at Raven to pick her up, Maura noticed he was wound a little tight. Noticed, hah, the vibes rolled off him in waves so strong it made the hair on her neck stand up.

"You ready to go?" No kiss, no "What's shakin' Sweet?". Not a bad mood, exactly, but he seemed to be trapped in his own head, only peering out at the world to avoid smacking into things.

"Yeah sure." She'd already done everything she needed to do. There were still a few stragglers hanging out but Miklos had closed down the bar and could usher them out when he felt like it. "Don't you wanna say hi to Janette?" She was in the back staring at financial reports and Maura knew she'd welcome some distraction about now.

"No thanks." He waited expectantly, one foot toward the door. He actually jingled his keys, like some impatient husband dragging his wife out of an annoying party.

Maura picked up her bag and jacket and followed him out, but had to ask "What's going on with you? You _always_ wanna visit with Janette. Why not tonight?"

He was silent on the ride home. She didn't prod him further, but he knew too well she'd wait all night (all _week_) for an answer and he could feel her eyes on him as he drove. Telling her "It's nothing, forget about it," would be a fool's errand because at times like this Maura's memory had the half-life of plutonium. They were home and scrounging for their respective late-night snacks when he finally answered as if only seconds had passed.

"I'm afraid I'll have to repeat it later for posterity."

"Well shit, I thought this whole shrink thing was supposed to _help_ you with your angst, not fertilize it." Nick made a rueful face as he polished off his third glass and went to sit on the sofa with a loud thump. When Maura joined him he tried to fall over into her arms but she pushed him back and instead stretched out with her head in his lap. "Uh-uh, my turn." When he blinked at her in consternation she protested, "Hey, you are not the only one with a pain in the butt job this week. You're the one seduced me into warm and fuzzy, so now you gotta come across once in awhile, unless it always has to cost a thousand a night. And in Vice they got a name for that." Nick's expression softened and as she felt his fingers tangle in her hair Maura added, "Besides it's supposed to be good for high blood pressure to stroke a cat in your lap after a hard day."

"We don't have a cat."

"You don't have blood pressure, either." A few moments of silence followed. "So, are you gonna make this easy or am I gonna have to stare you down until you crack?" She widened her eyes to demonstrate.

He shook his head, rolled his eyes, and bent to give Maura her first kiss of the evening.

"Well that's a start."

Now he laughed in spite of himself. "It's a good thing Dr. Johnson doesn't employ your guerrilla tactics or we'd all be in very deep trouble."

"Okay, so what's got you tied up in knots this time?"

"What have you got?" When she poked him in the gut he smiled again and said, "Okay, okay. You know a major part of this focus on mental health for cops is their relationships, how work affects them, how they affect work, how job stress affects the whole mix."

"Oh. Is _that_ all." Nick had to take a closer look to see Maura was deadpanning. She realized she was being unfair. "So how hard was it, really? I _mean_ it this time." He didn't have a ready answer, so after a moment she ventured "Is it that hard to talk about us?"

He shook his head, "No, no," and took her hand to press a kiss into the palm, "it's that hard _not_ to."

"Smooth talker."

He shook his head a bit, then mused "You know how we are, we just _do_ it," seeing Maura's smile grow devilish, he glared down and gave _her_ a poke, "you kn_o_w what I mean! That's one opinion we match absolutely, when it comes to _us_ we don't pick it all apart every minute. Even when things get screwed up, we don't analyze the whole thing we just find a way to fix it."

"You gotta admit sometimes we've taken the long way around. Maybe a certain amount of navel-gazing is helpful? I'm just no expert." Nick had lifted the front of her shirt and was peering underneath. "What the hell are you doing now?"

He lowered the shirt and quipped with a boyish smile, "Just navel-gazing." They both began to snicker until Maura pulled Nick down to her.

"You can't look like that without getting this," and she kissed him deeply as he gathered her up tighter against him.

When they finally came up for air he smoothed her hair back. She was looking thoughtful. "What?"

"Do you think we're, you know, weird? As a couple, I mean." Maura ventured.

This prompted a loud burst of laughter from Nick. "Do I think we're _what_?"

"Weird, like the fact we almost never go anywhere, we come home from work and sometimes I think left to our own devices we'd be complete hermits forever just reading on the sofa or staring at movies. I mean, I love our friends and all, but do you think it's weird that I could completely forget they exist and see nobody but you? Forever? And not ever think anything was missing?"

He was tracing her eyebrows with a fingertip. "Well maybe other people might think it's weird but I don't. Why ask why? We're not like any other couple _I've_ ever known, and I'll bet you too. I was telling Dr. Johnson that today, that whatever problems we run into or create for ourselves we work out between us,"

"Mostly," she reminded him.

"_Mostly_, and we just thrash 'em out here in our own private fortress. We're not compelled to 'share' with anyone else, strictly do-it-yourself. And it works." When she didn't immediately respond Nick prodded, "You _do _agree it works for us, right?"

"Yeah, I do. I'm too nervous to ask _why_, but it has so far. It's just, well, we're so _insular_ in some ways. We have our own friends and it's not like I can't function when you're not around. In some ways we look absolutely parallel lives to other people. But it scares me sometimes, feeling so complete here alone with you. How do I protect myself from that if I'm barely aware of it? Like how would I ever cope if I lost you?"

"You won't."

Maura sat up and settled back next to Nick, leaving her hand in his, loving as always the way he absently stroked her fingers. "I _did_. We both did, remember, we almost lost the whole damn fortress." She'd been making an effort to (marginally) clean up her language. He raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them, one by one.

"We're the ones that got lost. We found our way back. We had no choice, you know that."

"But really Nick, is it so smart to live on each other so completely? What would happen,"

He reached an arm around her and leaned in front to look her in the eye. "Nothing will happen. You will never lose me."

She scowled slightly. "Rivers of tears have been cried over 'never' and 'nothing'." She knew he was regarding her more closely now, unconsidered things finding their way into his head. "I'm not paranoid, Bats, really. Just you rummaging through all the drawers at work, so to speak, has me looking inside too. Not worries, just questions I guess. Can't help but ask questions." She smiled to convince him she wasn't all disturbed by it.

"You never could. Y'know my favorite question of yours?"

"I can't imagine." She was ready for a punch line, a suggestive remark.

"'Why not?' Why not take a chance, why not believe I can be who I am and who I should be at the same time… why not tell the truth when someone asks me who I am and how I live?"

Maura shrugged. "I get stuck in a rut."

"Wanna know the answer to the last one?"

"How you live? Like, sundown to sunrise, like on Chateau Moo du Pape, and an occasional side order of moi?"

"Ha, ha." He leaned closer and smiled against her cheek, "How about like the luckiest fool that was ever born?" Before she could respond he pressed his forehead to hers and mimicked "I know, I know, 'smooth talker'. C'mon, what say we call it a night? All this navel gazing," he whipped up her shirt and dove in to kiss her belly button as she exploded in laughter, "has worn me out. Race you upstairs," and he was gone, of course, in a blur of motion.

"You are _so_ not fair," Maura grumped up at him where he leaned smiling smugly over the gallery railing at her. In a flash he was at her side again, scooped her up in his arms and flew them both up the stairs. When he set them down in the bedroom she confirmed her own suspicions with a mock-despairing nod.

"Oh Nick, we are _so_ completely weird."

Nick shrugged and promised, "I won't tell if you won't. And besides, I'm a vampire… weird is all I'm good at."

She woke screaming desperately, make it stop, you have to make it _stop!_ and sprang bolt upright in the middle of the bed, lost in a welter of linens and blankets and darkness. Complete darkness, but for the dream-echoes of flames behind her eyes. She was half on her hands and knees, preparing to flee from she knew not what, and suddenly strong hands had hold of her, an insistent voice coming from near her, in front of her, she struggled because she didn't know.

"Maura, it's all right, you're having a dream," she was shaken none too gently and light from outside of the dream managed to bathe the face near hers, "it's me, I'm here, you're all right." Nick, it was Nick and he was here and he wasn't on fire, and there was the candle burning, he was holding her head between his hands, was whispering fiercely, "look at me, Sweet, you're having a dream, it's all right, you're at home in bed, wake up now…"

"_Nick_, oh god," she was shaking as if she'd come apart any second, trying to clutch at him but her fingers slipped on his smooth skin until he took them and held them to his own face, "Here, I'm here, it's okay." She tightened on him, holding on, holding his face near hers, gasping now because she couldn't come up with words to tell him.

"Ssh, Sweet, a dream, just a dream," he gathered Maura close against him, stroking her hair to try to ease her panic. It took some moments before she became still and her breathing slowed, but even then tortured whimpers came from deep within as if she couldn't stop them. When it seemed she was calm enough to understand him he whispered in her ear, "Can you tell me? Who were you talking to, what did you want them to stop?"

She pulled away a little then to focus on Nick's face, her eyes still wide. She could still _feel_ it, even awake and with dawning sense she was full of the terror and powerlessness. "Stop the burning, I wanted it to stop…"

"What was burning, Maura? Who could stop it?"

"I don't _know_," and she burst into tears as if it all were really happening, "I saw you, Nick I saw you, you _burned_, you were burning and the sun came up, you and Janette and Vachon and everyone because they knew, they found out about you because you couldn't keep from telling, I made you tell," the images overcame her again and so Nick embraced and rocked her, whispering softly to her in French and English, you're safe, I'm safe and Janette and Vachon, nothing is burning, we're all fine, sshhh, relax Sweet, calm down, I'm here." He realized it had to be some holdover from their conversations about his ongoing sessions with Dr. Johnson. Bits and pieces, the stress it was causing him and their concerns about discretion, and the reasons it was necessary, all of it must have ambushed her in sleep.

"I'm sorry, it's not making any sense I know," but he shushed her once more. "It's a dream, doucette, we don't control. Can you lie down now, are you okay?"

She sounded a little sheepish, "Yeah I think so," and let him draw her down with him and rearrange the knotted bedclothes around them like a cocoon.

"There, better now?" he asked when she rested against him with her head in the hollow of his shoulder. He felt her nod.

"I know it's not gonna happen like that, I'm not scared something's gonna slip, my head just played what-if," she began to shudder again, not so much remembering the dream as actually re-experiencing the _feeling_ of watching helplessly as everything she loved was destroyed in front of her. "It was so _real_ Bats, it still feels so real…" she burrowed closer in his arms.

"Do you want me to find a way to stop the sessions? Maybe you are just a little bit more worried than you think, do you want me to see if I can stop them if it's making you nervous that I might say something I shouldn't?" The thought had occurred to him more than once, and even though he knew he could hypnotize any inconvenient doubts from the psychologist's mind still he wondered, given her strong and logical personality, just how completely he might succeed. He'd rather not have to try. And though it wasn't like Nick to run his professional life to make Maura more comfortable the risks attached to continuing with this were too great to ignore. Even if Maura weren't worried enough to take her dream seriously, it was a wake up call nonetheless.

"Close your eyes, doucette," he persuaded her gently, stroking her forehead and the corners of her eyes. She shook her head and he felt her tense up.

"No, I'll see you burning again."

"Try, for just a minute okay?" She was lying on her back, her head cradled in his arm, his other hand resting on her stomach, moving in small circles. When her eyelids trembled shut, he kissed each one several times.

"I'm such a baby."

"Hush. Just relax." She rolled closer, hugging her arm around him. "There, that's better, right?"

"Yeah," she murmured. "Dreams don't matter, do they?" It was more a statement than a question. She'd never been the sort to consider them predictions of things to come, except where LaCroix had appeared once or twice.

"No they don't. Except when they scare you like this, they matter plenty to me. Think you can go back to sleep?"

"Mmm, yeah," she was fading, "don't let me go…" She smiled sleepily as he kissed her face several times.

"Not a chance."

Sometime later it was his turn. Nick jerked awake with Maura struggling simultaneously to wake him and duck his wild thrashing. It didn't take him as long to focus as it had Maura, but the images were just as vivid.

"Tell me," she insisted as she wiped the bloodstained perspiration from his face, unbothered by the residual fanged snarl and wild eyes.

"They took my badge away, they drummed me out. I wouldn't leave, kept trying to explain, but they said my secrecy was dangerous… and the Enforcers came for me, my incarnation had become a threat to the Community." He looked so honestly horrified that Maura hugged him tight, repeating everything he'd said to her barely an hour before. It's a dream, I'm here, nothing's really wrong, it's okay.

"I really have to put a stop to this," he told her when he'd regained control.

"How, for christsake? How can you tell her about nightmares you can't explain? Just stay with it, you've done fine so far and it can't be too much longer, can it? It's not like they're judging if you're fit for duty, it's just a fucking _baseline_ file!" She was shaking him violently without realizing it; when she noticed the bobbing of his head she held it still and kissed his cheek. "Sorry."

"Well beheading _can_ be fatal." Nick blinked to clear the dizziness.

"_Look_ at us, Bats, a week of lightweight introspection, and we're falling apart. Maybe we _are_ a little hypersensitive? It's not as if it's the end of the world."

Nick fell back in bed with a groan. "But it may be the end of a good night's sleep."

Maura settled down next to him and ran a hand through his damp curls, now stained pink with sweat. "Before you do anything about it, just see where step next goes. Maybe all the hard stuff is over."

"Take it from 800 years experience… the hard stuff is _never_ over." He sighed wearily and rolled over to wrap an arm around Maura. This time their sleep was undisturbed.


	5. Chapter 5

"I'm telling you Nick, this woman won't be happy until we're all spread out on Natalie Lambert's slab with our guts labeled nice and neat."

Nick stifled a smile. "Things must be moving fast. She didn't dig into my private life until day two."

"Yeah well you're an old hand at resisting prying questions, aren't you. Me? She had me dissecting parts of my marriage even _I_ don't wanna know about!"

"She does have a way of picking the psychic locks, doesn't she? Well it's all supposed to be for a good reason, right?" He hoped he sounded more convinced than he felt.

Schanke swilled half his coffee in a gulp, as if he needed more agitation. "I'm telling you, partner, she seems just a little _too_ interested in the non-professional issues, know what I mean?"

"Come on, Schank, be fair." Though he was tempted to agree, Nick knew it wasn't that simple. "We work in an emotional pressure cooker, we have to balance our own feelings against getting the job done right. Who's waiting at home and how they deal with that, and help us deal with it, well that _is_ a professional issue when you come right down to it." Schanke was looking at him with a suspicious expression.

"She's turned you, partner. She's made you a brain shrinking emotion-dissecting obsessive. And in only two sessions."

Rolling his eyes, he told Schanke "One more session, that's it. And you're right, all this extreme focus is playing havoc with the natural flow of things."

"When you hold it under a magnifying glass, something's gonna burn," Schanke nodded grimly. "Wouldn't it be a great time saver if she could make like those anthropologists, and just observe us all in our natural habitat." This elicited a marked shudder from Nick.

"I don't think Maura would be the hostess with the mostess for the department 'shrinky-dink'… that's Angela Johnson's nickname at my house."

"Wouldn't be Maura's idea?… naaahh," Schanke deadpanned as Nick shook his head exaggeratedly, muttering "Nah" under his breath. "No, Knight, what I meant was it's too bad she can't just be a fly on the wall when we all get together you know, like we did at the Christmas party, just see us working off the work, hanging with each other and partying with our ladies. She could sit in a corner and take notes or something. Bring a video camera, I dunno… less talk and more hard observation, like we do. I mean can you imagine if all we did on a case was write notes and read 'em later? We'd never bust _anyone_."

Suddenly Nick leapt from his seat, leaned over his desk, and shook Schanke's hand until it almost came loose from his arm. "I have got _the_ most brilliant partner in Metro!" he declared. Now Schanke looked positively frightened.

"Uh, okay Knight, calm down. Does Johnson prescribe tranquilizers, I wonder?"

Nick fell back in his seat, staring into space with the wheels obviously turning in his head. "What you said, Schank, about Angela Johnson seeing us all together, just being part of the party," now he looked at his partner. "That could save a _great_ deal of time."

"I dunno, man, I don't think someone like her is gonna blow off procedure to watch us like a zoo exhibit."

"No, no, not that. But what if she saw us as we are, no structure or procedure, don't you think it would leave _some_ sort of impression behind that would erase a few of the questions she had waiting in the wings? Without her even being aware of it?"

Light dawned, and Schanke's widening grin was both admiring and grateful. "And guess what's coming up in three days, my man?"

The precinct's Valentine's Day party, to be held at Raven. The party Janette had hosted two Christmases ago had been such a hit that it had been repeated this past holiday. And when she suggested to Nick that Valentine's Day might be particularly entertaining – "I have some _delicious_ decorations in mind, cheri" – he'd passed the idea on to Captain Cohen who didn't hesitate a moment before saying yes and posting a memo. Amanda Cohen was a great believer in rewarding her department with opportunities to socialize and unwind.

"Detective, your friend is such a brilliant party organizer I don't care if she sets us up at the Necropolis."

Nick swallowed a dark laugh. Janette would love nothing better than to host a party at Toronto's oldest cemetery. Now with the event coming up on Saturday, Nick wondered if he could persuade Dr. Johnson to attend simply as a friendly gesture welcoming her to the precinct.

"But Nick, if one of us asks her she could, you know, take it the wrong way." The puzzled look he got in response triggered an outburst of laughter. "Well come on, Knight, she's not exactly dog food."

"Oh. Yeah, I guess."

Shaking his head and rolling his eyes, his partner added, "Oh I keep forgetting, you're blinded by love. Anyway you know I'm right."

"Well how about I suggest it to the captain? Have her do the inviting. I mean you could do it, Schank, but the captain might take your interest the 'wrong way', of course. I on the other hand, being 'blinded by love', won't arouse suspicion."

"Ha, ha. Okay, give it a shot. It could make life easier for all of us."

"Let's hope so." When he broached the subject to Captain Cohen, Nick half expected her to consider it unwise for the psychologist to fraternize with her ongoing "patients", so he was pleasantly surprised at her response.

"That's not a bad idea, detective. She's a part of the precinct now, after all, and no sense keeping things more stiff and formal than we have to. I'll give her a call."

There was a jaunty spring in Nick's step as he returned to his and Schanke's desks. "Captain's gonna give her a call."

They set about finishing some paperwork on a recently closed case. After twenty minutes or so, Captain Cohen approached.

"Just to let you know, Dr. Johnson has accepted my invitation to join us at the party. That was very thoughtful of you, by the way."

Schanke muttered under his breath, "You have no _idea_ the thought that went into it."

"She's concerned she doesn't have a date," the captain continued and both detectives sang out in perfect unison "Taken!"

"Yes, gentlemen, I'm aware of that. I told her a date isn't necessary."

As she returned to her office, Nick was beaming. Escape was at hand, or at least the scrutiny might be scaled back a few notches before the final session (which had his nerves entirely too much on edge). He reached out, grabbed Schanke's wrist, and shook it.

"Schank, I could kiss you."

No change of expression on his partner's face but the raising of a single eyebrow. "Now wouldn't Johnson have a field day with _that_."

"The shrinky-dink is coming to the _party_?" Maura couldn't believe it. "Isn't that a violation of her code of shrinkdom or something… never get too close to the lab rats?"

"Oh come on, she's a co-worker isn't she? For six months anyway. I think she might be professional enough to keep work and socializing separate."

He sounded just a little too glib. Maura put down the dish she'd been drying and approached Nick where he leaned against the wall. "You're up to something, detective."

"My, living with a cop,"

"Has made me _so_ suspicious, yeah I know." She backed him flat against the wall. "Come on, spill it. What have you and Donnie the Boy Wonder got planned?" She'd once told Schanke, "Boy, I wonder how you get away with so much shit", and an alias was born.

Nick shrugged, shook his head, weaseled away, eyes innocently wide, "I don't know _what_ you're talking about. Just because we thought it might be nice to bring our new colleague into our little family, you know, let her see us all up close and personal without the closed office door and the notebook…" he couldn't suppress a smile as Maura followed him in his aimless circuit of the living room and studio corner, "where she _might_ just see enough personal interaction between all of us," he turned suddenly and wrapped an arm around Maura's waist, "you know, _all_ of us…"

"To keep her from having to ask some of the navel-gazing questions that are getting just a _little_ too close to the, you should pardon the expression, 'jugular'?"

He snuck a hand under her shirt and poked a finger into her belly button. "Exactly."

She looked down at his hand, still invisible, "You know if you keep doing that one of these times I'm gonna bust a leak and fly around the room backwards." He blinked at her.

"Where _do_ you come up with these things, " Nick removed his hand from her stomach to rap lightly on her head, "Hello, anyone sane in there?"

She wormed away with a laugh. "If I were sane I wouldn't _be_ here."

"Then you and Angela Johnson will get along just fine."

She returned to finish doing the dishes and Nick followed, wrapping his arms around her from behind. "Y'know I'm looking forward to some warm and fuzzy dancing Saturday night…"

"Well Derek asked me to sit in with them," she began. "All that love song shit, he says it needs a woman's voice. And mine is all they could come up with." It wasn't false modesty; though Maura knew she could carry a tune and did pretty well with particular songs, nobody would ever confuse her with Norah Jones.

"Uh-uh," Nick reached through her arms to take the dishtowel and plate from her hands and put them on the counter, then turned her to face him. "I do not intend to be a band widower all night. This is our first Valentine's day where we're both on the same page, and I intend to cram in as much warm and fuzzy as is inhumanly possible."

Well he was right about that, she had to admit. Their first Valentine's day they had only just met and were still sorting out their living arrangements and personal relationship. Their second was spent in Boston living separate lives. This would be the first where they were together _and_ emotionally harmonious.

"Oh all right. Maybe just half a set or something. But you gotta promise me, Lord Byron," she warned, trying not to get distracted by the intense way he was looking in her eyes.

"Anything, Sweet," his hands moved slowly up and down her back.

"No big frilly cards,"

Butterfly kisses scattered on her face, "I wouldn't think of it."

"No folios of mediaeval love poems embossed with gold leaf,"

Nuzzling under her ear, "Unspeakable… I wouldn't dare."

"Although I wouldn't mind a couple flowers, within reason,"

"Your wish is my command, just a few posies," he pressed nose-to-nose, brushing his lips against hers, "anything else for my eternal pragmatist?"

"Yeah," and she whispered in his ear conspiratorially, "you gotta wear that black leather suit with the tight pants."

He smiled and pressed his face into her hair. "I'm just your immortal love toy, aren't I?"

"You never had it so good, detective."

As they led each other upstairs to bed, he had to agree.


	6. Chapter 6

"Rise and whine, Valentine! I made coffee!"

Nick's cheery announcement carried up the stairs and tore through Maura's deliciously sleepy fog like fangs through a jugular. Shit. She knew he'd make a big deal of this, she knew it even as he promised not to. But Valentine's day had him switched on and his dimmer was busted; he was gonna be like a sugared-up toddler on Christmas morning and she was bloody well stuck with it. Byron my ass. He was every Harlequin Romance rolled into one. Somewhere deep inside a flicker of guilt reminded Maura how unfair it was for him to be stuck living with the anti-Christ of romance, but at the same time she was mindful of the reason Janette couldn't take another minute of it. Then again Janette had lasted nearly a century and Maura was barely starting year three. And goddamnit, Nick made kickass coffee just the way she liked it. None of these things congealed in any meaningful way in her semiconscious brain, so she concentrated on sniffing for caffeine. Why didn't she smell coffee? Usually he made it so strong (yum) it lifted the ceiling right off the loft. Beginning ever-so-slowly to creep from under her burrow of covers, all she could smell was…

Roses. Roses? Well he did promise "a few posies", but the air was heavy with the fragrance. Maura felt a strange, uneven weight on top of the covers as she struggled to sit up… Omigod. Roses. Piles of them, _pounds_ of them, acres and acres of rose blossoms and petals, not a trace of greenery among them, pink and white and peach-tipped cream and deep wine-red, they were heaped on top of the bed and spilling onto the carpet. She'd never seen so many… never even imagined so many.

"_NI-CO-LAAASSSS_!"

Nick materialized promptly, so completely pleased with himself he remained hovering inches above the floor in the doorway. "You rang?" The vision before him was so priceless and perfect he cursed himself for not owning a camera. Maura sat struggling toward wakefulness, hair a rat's nest, face creased from the pillow, eyes bloodshot and confused. Surrounded by thousands of blossoms, she resembled a centerpiece from a Bosch banquet.

"'a few posies?'" she croaked, her voice still strangled from a night's disuse. "This is what you call 'a few posies'?"

Immediately Nick slapped a look of alarm on his face, rushed to the bed and began scattering flowers as if they were burning embers. "Oh no! Who could have done such a terrible thing? Don't panic, I'll save you!" Maura sat motionless as he carried on. After a moment or two of shameless overacting Nick finished by sitting down in front of her and sprinkling a handful of petals over her head. "Happy Valentine's Day, doucette."

Now fully awake, Maura's eyes opened wider and wider as she took in Nick's handiwork. "But you said just a few…" she repeated weakly.

"'Few' is such a relative term… compared to the fêtes at the court of Versailles, this is positively barren," he waved his hand to indicate the bed and floor littered with roses.

Maura sighed. "Well shit, I guess I'll just have to make the best of it…" a smile began to warm her face.

"You could do worse," he reminded her and she jumped on him then, knocking him onto his back and devouring him with kisses.

"So could you," she pulled his shirt buttons open and went to work on his neck and chest. "Never did it in a bed of roses, wonder what it's like…"

Nick rolled her to the side with a growl, "I have a feeling we're about to find out..."

All things considered, Maura had to admit the day was off to a pretty good start.

"Are you sure you don't want the St. Valentine portrait over here?" Miklos asked Janette for the third time. He was rather fond of the large, elaborate painting of the unfortunate founder of the day, bound, bruised, and being led to his death.

"Miklos, please, don't make me explain again. This entertainment is for mortals, and mortals are fond of the notion of losing one's head to love, not to the Emperor. Now kindly return the painting to wherever you found it. And please, no photographs of Mr. Capone, or Mr. Moran, or that grimy little garage in Chicago." Janette knew that Miklos' dry sense of humor would not be shared by some of the guests. Though some, she thought with a smile, might appreciate a dark historical reference or two, it was better to cater to the majority. She was nothing if not a perceptive hostess, which is why Metro continued to trust her with its social gatherings.

When Vachon, Brianna, and Miklos had finished with the decorations Janette stood back to admire the effect. Golden hearts strung from crimson silk ribbons, swags of ivory lace woven with red glass beads, French candelabra had been set at key locations and candle-lit crystal chandeliers were hung from the ceiling in place of the customary strobe lights and smoke machines. The tables were draped in rich satins and brocade tablecloths and set with crystal vases filled with red roses. Janette had to admit that Toronto Metro Police gatherings were perhaps her favorite functions, as even at their most festive the guests could be counted upon to behave like civilized mortals. For that reason she felt secure in using her most elegant and valuable fixtures and decorations, a rare occasion to indulge her taste for a bit of refinement in an often uncouth age. She had instructed her staff that formal attire was to be worn. Tuxedos for the gentlemen, and gowns for the ladies. Nothing too fussy so as not to interfere with their functions, but tonight Raven was to be an elegant salon and not the local Goth "swillerie".

"Gentlemen, tonight's dress code extends to you as well," she told the musicians. The members of Vamp were not impressed.

"I'm supposed to play drums in a _tux_?" whined Ramon.

"I have every faith in you. For someone who attended to drumming in full military uniform as countless enemies of the Revolution went to the guillotine, enduring formal attire for a single evening should prove little challenge."

"Yeah well I didn't have hi-hats and double snares to deal with then…" he muttered grumpily. "Okay, fine, I'll wear a tux. But _no tails_. They get caught in the stool."

"Very well, Ramon, I will leave the cut of the jacket to your judgment." Turning to the others she announced, "I will see you all here at 6:30pm sharp please. Vachon, please review the necessary bar inventory with Brianna. And Miklos, security will be your responsibility this evening, as Maura will not be working."

"If we have any trouble we'll call a cop," Vachon cracked.

Maura stood back from the mirror and did a quick turn. She'd decided to abandon the usual Janette-inspired couture gowns for something a bit more exotic. Her Indian sari silk tunic was slashed from the top of the collar to deep into her cleavage. Its background was deep teal with gold medallion embroidery, the borders of the neckline and hems were wide burgundy bands with finer borders of similar gold embroidery. It reached to just below her knee, but was slashed up to the hip on each side, and had long narrow sleeves. Underneath she wore stirrup leggings of black stretch velvet, and on her feet simple slippers of black leather with just enough wedge to make for easy footwork. Yep, she was going to dance her butt off tonight, fast or slow, with no extra yards of fabric to wrangle. She pulled one side of her hair back and up and fastened it with a silver barrette, leaving the rest to hang loose. Satisfied with both her look and her comfort, she went downstairs to wait for Nick to finish showering and changing.

"So what to you think? Am I ready to party?"

When Maura looked up from her reading to see Nick descending the stairs she was grateful to be sitting down, because she nearly passed out cold. As requested he was wearing the black leather suit, not merely leather but butter-soft doeskin that moved on him like silk. The jacket was tailored, and the trousers were… have mercy, that's what they were, have-mercy pants. They fit like he was born in them, not tight enough to be lounge-lizard tacky but gracefully following every delicious curve of muscle and bone. He'd chosen one of the sapphire blue silk shirts that Maura had bought him for Christmas… if he never wore another color she would die happy. And he'd left the top button undone, reckless devil. He trotted down the stairs as she stared slack-jawed. She'd lived with him night and day for two years, but there were times when out of nowhere a good eyeful could fry her brain.

"What? Do these pants make my butt look big?" quite deliberately Nick turned his back and flipped open the jacket's vent, twisting his head around to smile mischievously. "Well?"

"Well, what say we stay home tonight?" Maura mumbled, trying not to drool.

Nick shook his head firmly as he pulled her to her feet. "No way, tonight we are going to demonstrate to Dr. Angela Johnson that Toronto's finest are normal, happy, and well-grounded in their personal lives." He spun her around and nodded appreciatively before diving in to nibble her under the ear. "Among other things. Let's roll, Sweet." When he pulled her to the back door and helped her on with her black leather trench coat and gloves she said "I thought you parked out front last night…"

"We're taking a different ride tonight," he grinned and handed her the motorcycle helmet he'd had custom made for her. Black, reflective, and it absolutely made her feel like the coolest woman in the universe when she put it on. He opened the back door and she saw the polished-up bike waiting. It, too, had been custom made, in Italy… so custom made, in fact, that there was no logo or brand name of any kind anywhere on it. Nothing but a plate of chrome script: "Knight", on either side of the sleek black tank.

"Why not," he shrugged and winked as he pulled the keys from his pocket, "it goes with the suit." Nick put on his own helmet, a larger version of Maura's, and jumped on the bike, kickstarting it as he did. In that second Maura felt he was the sexiest man alive – okay, not alive, but still – she hiked up her coat in a heartbeat and climbed on behind him. God she loved riding with him… tucked up tight behind Nick, arms locked around his waist and her chin planted on his shoulder, tearing up the road with the engine roaring… it was the next best thing to foreplay. In fact on some summer nights when they raced the moon out of the city and the sunrise back in, it _was_ foreplay. It was usually all she could do to keep from dropping her hands to hold on considerably lower than decency and safety (hers, anyway) dictated. Tonight she behaved herself, hugging close to Nick and shutting her eyes to feel the night fly past them. She got high on the speed when they rode together like this, quite the opposite of riding in a car where speeding made her nervous. They arrived at the club in record time and parked at the curb. Vachon was playing doorman to the arriving guests as Miklos tended bar and he whistled in appreciation when Nick and Maura strode into Raven, just a little windblown and pulling off their helmets.

"Well, that's what I call an entrance!"

Maura took Nick's helmet after she'd taken off her coat and gloves. "I'll take this stuff in the back," she told him, "I'll find you."

Nick scanned the room; they were a little early and only a few of his coworkers were here. No sign of Dr. Johnson or the captain yet, or Schanke and Myra for that matter. He was about to make small talk at the bar with Miklos when Janette appeared in a slinky black satin off-the-shoulder dress trimmed with crimson teardrop crystals that looked for all the world like drops of blood. A necklace sparkling with tiny garnet cabochons completed the image.

"Why Nicholas," she purred, "you're looking very dangerous tonight," and slipped her hands around his waist inside the leather jacket. "Why do I get the feeling your amour fou helped pick out your ensemble?"

"Because she did."

Janette managed to look (and feel) him up and down as she pulled him closer. "Our tastes do run in similar directions where you are concerned… happy Valentine's Day, cheri," and Nick smiled as he willingly returned her embrace and – very – lingering kiss. Which ended abruptly as Janette noticed Angela Johnson standing by, waiting to say hello.

"Dr. Johnson," Nick managed not to stammer, "glad you could make it." Janette's right hand was still hidden inside his jacket and was wandering more than it probably should.

"Please, call me Angela, this is a party. I wanted to thank you, Nick, for asking the captain to invite me. It's always more pleasant to get to know your colleagues outside of the office. It can seem a little adversarial in session. And you must be Maura… I'm so glad to meet you, Nick has of course told me a great deal about you." She extended her hand to Janette, who took it in her own (but not before making Nick jump with a discreet squeeze).

Janette suppressed a smile and corrected graciously, "Janette duCharme, I am pleased to meet you I'm sure. This is my establishment. Maura works for me, though I have given her tonight off to enjoy the party with Nicolas. I can't say where she is at the moment…"

Angela looked very perplexed. Nick dove in a little too brightly, "Janette and I are old friends. Very old friends. Family, you could say." Angela was regarding them both with an expression that suggested she was wondering just what kind of family they were.

"There you are! I need a crowbar to keep you two apart." Maura swept up and greeted Janette with a kiss on each cheek before insinuating herself comfortably between her and Nick. Nick grabbed Maura around the waist and held her tightly in front of him, announcing over her shoulder, "Here's Maura. Maura Logue, this is Angela Johnson."

"Well hello, Angela, you've certainly been a topic of conversation lately at our house. Nice to meet you finally… funny you don't look like a mad scientist," she ignored Nick's near-violent nudge as Angela laughed gamely and shook her hand.

"Yes, well, my reputation precedes and exaggerates me, I imagine."

"Nicolas was just explaining to Angela the length and depth of our friendship," Janette informed Maura.

"Really." She glanced over her shoulder at Nick, whose smile was frozen in place. "How'd you manage _that_ in just three minutes?"

"You're not helping," he muttered in her ear, still smiling.

"That'll cost you extra," she retorted in rather more than a whisper. "Inside joke," she assured Angela.

"Of course." She saw Amanda Cohen beckoning her from the other end of the bar, where Schanke and Myra had just arrived. "Excuse me, please, I have to say hello to the captain… I'm sure we'll talk later."

When she'd gone Nick released Maura and sternly regarded her and Janette as they stood at the bar trying not to laugh.

"Well at least she didn't go running off into the night," Maura reassured Nick, feeling a little sorry for him. Well almost.

"Ah, but the night is young, cherie," Janette reminded them both to Nick's obvious chagrin. Maura sidled up to Nick and took Janette's place, wrapping around him beneath his jacket.

"Don't worry, Nick, she'll see us get all warm and fuzzy and we'll cancel all that confusion right out."

Janette raised an eyebrow, "And how will you manage _that_, cherie, in just one evening?" and she drifted away to greet her growing company of guests. Maura then turned to look up at Nick with the most wide-eyed and innocent of smiles.

"I _looovvve_ you, Bats." She drew the word out into a little song all its own.

Nick's expression was one part annoyance and two parts apprehension. "I'm not quite _that_ easy."

"Sure you are," she goosed him proper, enjoying the way he jumped forward against her, "why do you think I dressed you up like this? C'mon, let's mingle."

Shaking his head and smiling in spite of himself, Nick let Maura take his hand and lead him to where Schanke, Myra, and the captain were chatting with Angela. From the corner of his eye, Nick caught a glimpse of a tall, tuxedoed figure smoothly entertaining one of the female detectives with what was apparently an amusing anecdote. Feeling eyes on him, the figure raised his head to lock gazes with Nick. Oh, _swell_. LaCroix. He smiled enigmatically and returned to his conversation, handing a glass of champagne to the young woman.

Nick sighed as Maura drew his arms around her waist and leaned back in a rampant display of Warm and Fuzzy for Angela's benefit.

It was gonna be a long night.


	7. Chapter 7

It didn't take long for everyone to essentially forget the "office" and settle into a night of partying and/or romance. The singles: Grace, Natalie, various detectives and denizens of the coroner's department, took over a group of tables where they swapped stories of disastrous dates, toasted each other's future prospects, and generally raised the kind of congenial hell reserved for such occasions. Married and otherwise coupled members of the precinct spent more time on the dance floor showing off their harmonious partnership during the fast numbers and indulging in shameless PDA during the slow ones. The band had, wisely, tilted their set lists toward the latter.

As promised Maura joined the band for just three songs. She'd made Derek promise to stack them together so she wouldn't be interrupted at various times during the evening. The week before (and before she'd confessed to Nick she'd be "working" a bit this night) she'd consulted with the boys to arrange the three songs of her choosing.

"You're kidding, Luna, right?" They all stared at her when she told them what she wanted.

"This one's a freaking country western number! We don't play that cowboy crap," Dryden announced firmly. He was objecting to a downbeat love song, Bring It On Home, whose charts showed an extended pedal steel break. "You think we're hillbillies or something?"

Maura rolled her eyes. "Shit, you'd think I was asking you to play a Catholic mass or something. Look, Derek, arrange it any way you like for you guys, as long as it ain't a rock fest." Ramon was grumbling too.

"_Dudes_, take it or leave it!" They took it. The other two songs were quite acceptable, Your Love Amazes Me ("Guess who she's gonna sing _that_ to?" Dryden announced as he rolled his eyes) and Addicted to Love.

"We'll start out with that, then Amazes," she told them, and was interrupted by "Gonna need a neck brace for _that_ segue," from Ramon.

"Shaddup. And from Amazes we'll close it with Bring It On Home. That is if the King of Rock doesn't object," she glared at Dryden.

"Fine. I'll play hillbilly music in a tux. It's not like I don't have time to live it down."

"_Miklos!_" Maura hollered, "gimme a stake and a hammer will you?"

Derek shook his head, laughing. "Luna you're the only woman I know who can turn a love song into a death threat."

She shrugged. "It's a gift."

Now a sultry instrumental was fading and Derek was beckoning Maura from where she stubbornly clung to Nick on the dance floor. "Don't wanna," she whined.

"Hey, this was your idea, not mine. A woman's touch, and all that," Nick reminded her with a smug grin as he pried her loose. He had to admit he was glad he'd worn the leather tonight, she couldn't seem to keep her hands off him and as they danced her fingers wandered all over the smoothness and managed to stay just within the bounds of decency, at least when they were _out_side of his jacket.

"_I'll_ give you 'a woman's touch'," Maura warned him. He kissed her under the ear and rumbled, "I'm counting on it."

Nick wandered to the bar where Amanda Cohen, whose husband had the night shift at the hospital tonight, stood with Angela and, shoot me now, LaCroix. In fact LaCroix had been displaying an inordinate amount of interest in the department "new-hire" for most of the evening, having tired of enthralling that young female detective.

"Ah, Nicholas, your true love is going to serenade us, how _sweet_." Nick's expression tightened at LaCroix's emphasis on the last word and his utter enjoyment the guaranteed reaction it triggered.

"Just a few, she said. Derek persuaded her it would be a nice touch."

"Maura is a singer?" Angela inquired. "You never mentioned that." She wasn't referring to their sessions, of course, but to casual conversation here and at work.

"Just for fun, once in a while. Nothing professional," Nick explained. "I enjoy hearing her, but I guess I'm a prejudiced source."

"Nonsense, Nicholas," LaCroix chided, still the picture of exaggerated charm. "What voice could not be beautiful when singing to her true love."

Behind the bar, Vachon pretended to stick his finger down his throat and gag.

Maura's opening rock number drew more dancers onto the floor.

"Interesting choice for a love song," Captain Cohen observed. "Then again you've said she's not exactly a romance queen."

"To say the least."

Suddenly LaCroix jumped as if poked with a cattle prod. In the final chorus of the song, Maura fixed him with a laser stare and sang, "Might as well face it you're addicted to blood."

"Guess this one's for you," Nick muttered from the side of his mouth, glancing around to see if anyone else had noticed. Apparently not.

"She's such a droll creature," LaCroix drawled in return.

But by then Maura had launched into the "real" love song, and as he had at their first Christmas party here at Raven Nick stood transfixed, his eyes locked on hers, hearing the voice of an angel where others heard only something fairly pleasant and on-key but not much more.

"For a woman allergic to romance she seems to be doing pretty well," Cohen commented to Nick, but he was in another zone entirely. She turned to Angela and added, "Well doctor, I guess you're seeing a good example of the therapeutic effects of our detectives' 'primary relationships' tonight."

Angela took in the various couples on the dance floor and entwined in various dark corners, and the "singles" entertaining one another elsewhere. "Do you often host parties for the precinct?"

"Several times a year if I can get the department to budget it. These people spend so much time together for the worst of reasons, I think it's important to give them a chance to get together for better ones. They're good cops, and against all odds their families help them stay that way most of the time." She excused herself to join the "singles" table. Nick had wandered closer to the band the better to stare at Maura.

"I must say, Dr. Johnson," LaCroix interjected with apparent casualness, "my friend Nicholas has been rather transformed since meeting his Maura."

"Oh?"

He clucked sadly like a worried mother. "He'd always been such a dark soul. I can't say that I understand his attraction to such an… independent and often unrefined creature, but the result has been undeniable. Where he used to keep his own grim counsel, Nicholas now someone to help lighten his cloudier aspects."

Angela looked from LaCroix to where Nick stood. "You've been friends a long time?"

"Oh, _centuries_," he quipped, enjoying his own joke. "Though we haven't always seen eye to eye."

"Then you know Janette DuCharme, as well?"

"Indeed. You could say we're something of a family of convenience."

"Uh-huh…"

"Tell me doctor, in your interviews with Nicholas you haven't uncovered anything… disturbing?"

Now she focused on the tall stranger. "Mr. LaCroix,"

"Lucien, please."

"Very well, Lucien. I certainly can't discuss anything said in session. And even if I could, I wouldn't. And certainly not at a party with someone I've only just met." She meant to walk away, but couldn't even seem to remove her gaze from his preternaturally deep eyes.

"You would tell me, though, because after all I am family." Nobody was nearby, and it looked to anyone as if he merely leaned down slightly to be better heard. In fact, he had Angela Johnson in the grip of his "persuasive" power.

"We have discussed nothing out of the ordinary realm of a detective's concerns," she found herself saying, though she wouldn't remember it later.

"Nothing at all?"

"Well…" LaCroix tightened his psychic grip as she hesitated, "he does seem far more determined to share his deepest concerns and stresses only with his girlfriend, but it doesn't seem to be a harmful habit."

"Nothing else?"

"No."

Abruptly LaCroix straightened. Good. The only reason he'd insisted on attending this wretchedly boring gathering was to determine whether this mortal doctor had managed any insights into Nicholas's immortal nature. The last thing the Community needed was a clever woman drawing Nicholas "out of himself" and into disaster. While LaCroix never entirely approved of Nicholas's mortal friends, even those who claimed to love him more than life, he at least knew they could be trusted not to expose him or his kind if only because of their devotion to him. Given the choice, though, he'd prefer to have the knowledge resting entirely with the good Dr. Lambert. Maura had proven herself prey to a dangerous lack of self control, as evidenced by her revenge on the killer of that friend of hers. While admittedly diverting, in the end the incident had caused LaCroix all manner of inconvenience.

Angela re-focused on the scene around her as if emerging from a fugue. She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Mr., ah, Lucien, my mind seems to have wandered. What were you saying?"

"I was asking how your new project agrees with you. No details, of course, I always respect confidentiality . Are you finding areas to improve conditions for the police as they struggle with the dire tragedies they are involved in?"

And so the conversation continued. Angela did take note, between LaCroix's long-winded storytelling and philosophizing, of the final song in Maura's set, which expressed a support particularly appropriate to Nick and his coworkers. She'd already filed (however unconsciously) tonight's group of detectives and associates under "well adjusted", and their loved ones obviously made up a large part of that equation. Though it was unlike her to hinge a conclusion on something as flimsy as a public display of affection (and Nick and Maura, not to mention Don Schanke and his wife, hardly were shy in that respect) it seemed tonight that he had spoken the simple truth when he said that their rather isolated relationship answered all of their emotional needs and questions. Those that weren't answered were simply rendered moot. She was willing to admit the difference between secretiveness and privacy.

Nick engulfed Maura in a warm hug when she left the band to rejoin him.

"You really should be careful about that," he teased her as she pried her mouth away from his to gulp a breath.

"About what?"

"Well if you keep making me feel like we're the only two people here, who knows what I might get into my head."

"Mrrr," she mimicked a sissy version of his guttural growl and reached inside of his jacket to grope his butt. Again. He'd stopped jumping hours ago, now replying with a sly smile as he led her back to the bar to rescue Angela from LaCroix. Nick didn't suspect any truly dangerous intentions on his mentor's part, but he did imagine that the poor doctor was about worn out by his elegant attentions.

"So Angela, have you levered any dark secrets from the Night Crawler?" Maura asked with a too-curious smile. Angela's head snapped back to face LaCroix as if she'd just realized something.

"I _knew_ there was something familiar about you, it's your voice! You have that call-in show on CERK."

LaCroix cast a smug glance at Nick and Maura. "How nice to know that my humble attempts to aid the struggling souls of Toronto has drawn the attention of a true professional."

Gawd, I should've worn hip boots, Maura groaned inwardly.

"Your approach certainly is effective in drawing out the callers' abilities to answer their own questions."

"I feel I've achieved a balance between Rogers and Socrates that listeners respond well to." LaCroix was on an ego roll, and only Nick and Maura knew what cold disdain he actually felt toward his listeners, and this "professional" as well. He believed emotional uncertainty to be a sign of weakness and inferior intellect. His pleasure was in manipulating; if ever he suspected he were actually prompting callers to change for the better he would immediately abandon the game. Of course Angela Johnson heard what the rest of Toronto heard.

"Be right back," Nick told Maura and took off. Swell, she thought, he's abandoning me with the shrinky-dink and CERK's analyst from hell. Her eyes glazed over as LaCroix continued to hold forth for the benefit of the attentive psychologist.


	8. Chapter 8

"Don't take him _too_ seriously," Maura warned Angela, "it might come back to _bite_ you." LaCroix cast a frozen eye on her.

"Why don't you and Nicholas find a dark corner and molest one another, there's a good girl."

Okay, she knew LaCroix wasn't scoping out Angela for a potential feed. He'd never cross that line where Nick's coworkers were concerned. But this was a party, and Maura couldn't resist getting her digs in. An opportunity like tonight so seldom arose, where LaCroix was constrained from responding in full fury and threat.

Angela felt the tension between Nick's girlfriend and his longtime friend. Territorial issues, she figured. If she only knew. Nick reappeared then, having slipped a cd to Derek to put on the club's sound system.

"We've been asked by one of Toronto's finest to take a break," Derek was explaining to the guests – not many of whom were paying attention – and he continued, "I've been told this is a chance to 'finish the dance', whatever that means. Be back in a few." He hit the controls and the band left the stage as the opening bars of a schmaltzy disco tune filled the room.

"BeeGees!" cried Schanke in delight, "c'mon Myra, let's boogie!"

Holy shit, Maura recognized this as the song Nick had requested at Pulse on that first night he'd sought her out after abandoning her. The dance that she'd cut short in anger. Now Nick slipped an arm around her.

"We got interrupted last year," he reminded her, "I thought maybe this time we could finish the dance," he was smiling "that" smile. Maura was so taken by surprise by both the memory and the gesture he added, "you have to promise not to smack me this time." He held out his hand as he'd done that night in Boston, but this time she took it and followed him gladly.

"What was that all about?" Angela asked LaCroix, who of course knew the answer but for once was inspired to discretion. He shrugged in mock ignorance.

"Suffice it to say that theirs is a secret language, doctor." It was the closest he'd come to honesty all evening.

Maura moved with Nick as if they'd been holding this dance in suspended animation for nearly a year. He led her with his eyes as well as his hands and she followed with her heart as well as her body. No matter what rifts they'd navigated in their time together, or what differences had to be forced into perspective, when they came together to music it was as complete as when they made love and neither thought to question why or how. Maura's eyes never left Nick's, and on the final slow fadeout he locked her against him and dipped her nearly to the floor, his mouth barely brushing hers. Not that they were alone in their musical PDA; Schanke and Myra steamed up their own share of the dance floor as well. In fact as both he and Nick restored their women and themselves to a state of upright decency, they shared that partners' look that said We Are _Bad_ Aren't We? Myra and Maura shared a laugh; they hadn't missed the look.

"You think we oughta leave these two alone, or what?" Myra suggested.

"Nah," Nick quipped, "Schank always wants to lead." His arms were still firmly wrapped around Maura's waist, holding her tightly against him. A sudden flash of heat shot through her and she muttered in his ear, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" She was looking toward the door to the back rooms. More specifically to _their_ back room.

"Psychic," Nick replied but began walking her toward the side door.

"What?" her question was muffled by Nick's kiss as he pushed them through the door into the alley where he'd parked the bike.

"Sshhh." Maura acquiesced, having little choice as Nick worked her toward the bike, alternating between wild kisses and deep, quiet laughter. He backed her onto the motorcycle's seat until she was nearly on top of the tank, and moved forward until he was sitting facing her.

"How 'bout a spin," he purred.

Mightily worked up, but still clueless, Maura told him, "I can't ride like this…"

"Wanna bet?" and he seized her around the waist and yanked her closer to straddle him, pulling her legs to wrap around his hips. "Vrrooom," and he dove forward to catch her mouth again. God, he was _crazy_, she thought even as she grabbed his head and let him worry about such foolishness as balance (or witnesses). For a moment she was afraid his insistent hands would rip her beautiful tunic, but he seemed satisfied running them over her as if there were no fabric in his way. Her awareness blocked out everything but Nick's kissing, nipping, teeth and tongue and greedy hands as she tried to match them with her own.

"Enough foreplay," he snarled, eyes pulsing deep gold as he reached down between them where things were getting "crowded". So absorbed was Maura in the depth and variety of their caresses that the sudden ripping noise took her entirely by surprise. Her momentarily stunned expression was more than matched by Nick's intense gaze when he touched hot, soft skin. In spite of the moment she protested "You tore my new pants!" as if he didn't know.

"File a complaint," Nick mumbled huskily and then Maura muttered, "Crazy," as she tried to mimic his direct approach. In her haste her fingers couldn't find any access through the supple leather. Her unsuccessful groping only served to excite Nick more, and he snarled impatiently and shoved her hands away to do it himself. He might have been amused by her inability to navigate her favorite turn-on-suit if he weren't blinded by more physical concerns. His mouth opened, fangs fully extended, his eyes burning as he lifted Maura in a single powerful movement and pulled her down onto himself with a guttural hiss that blended with her whimpering gasp.

"Crazy," she groaned as they continued to consume each other, "crazy…" No reply but growls and low keening Maura could feel reverberate in her mouth and vibrate through Nick's hands on her.

Question: If an alley door opens onto a carnally combusting couple who are deaf to everything but each other, is there a sound?

Angela Johnson might have considered the question if she'd had more time to think about it. What she saw, or _thought_ she saw at first, was Detective Knight and Maura Logue perched on a motorcycle, making out like a couple of teenagers. A nanosecond was all it took for her to realize her error but as she suppressed a gulp and prepared to retreat discreetly she noticed something that made stumbling on her colleague _in flagrante delicto_ pale in comparison. The motorcycle that should have been precariously rocking with their feverish motion was instead _hovering_ steadily, nearly a foot above the pavement. Shaking her head, this _can't_ be what it looks like, Angela beat a hasty exit. The slamming of the door didn't even register with the desperately engaged Nick and Maura.

After rushing back into the club Angela felt the serious need to splash some cold water on her face (for more reasons than clarity) but managed instead to enter, unnoticed, the door at the end of the bar that led to the "private chambers" in the back of the club. She turned to re-enter the club proper but was distracted by a hissing sound around the corner. Unable to restrain her curiosity she peered around and down the hall, where she saw the club owner, Janette, apparently engaged with a young man in activity quite similar to that of Nick and Maura, though in the earlier stages. Oh well, it's Valentines' Day, she thought, but then was stopped dead by the sight of Janette's head rearing back, obviously the source of the hiss, and diving in again as if striking. Janette was visibly battened onto the young man's neck, his head thrown back in some sort of ecstasy Angela considered a bit over-the-top even for an enthusiastic hickey. When Janette withdrew slightly as if for breath (oh if only she knew), was that _blood_ coloring her mouth, or merely smeared lipstick? Once again Angela fled into the bar, only to collide with Don Schanke and his wife. Who, thank god, were, standing upright and engaged in conversation instead of cannibalistic foreplay or full-blown intercourse.

"So, doc, what do you think of our little group? Have you ever seen more devoted couples than your colleagues and their friends?" He hugged an affectionate arm around his wife.

"Er, I can't say I have," she told them in complete honesty. Schanke looked around the club, emptying gradually as the hour grew later.

"Where'd Nick and Maura get to? We wanted to say 'bye and Happy Valentine's Day before we left."

"Uhm, I don't know. Maybe they went outside for some air."

"Probably in the alley checking up on that haute bike of theirs. I'll go get 'em."

"_No_," Angela interjected hastily and grabbed Schanke's arm as he headed for the side door to the alley, "I was just out there, I didn't see them." She had to choke back a slightly hysterical laugh as she considered the consequences of announcing she'd just seen one of the precinct's best detectives and his significant other having crazed sex on a motorcycle in the alley. In midair. And that the club owner was in the back hall drinking some young man's blood. Christ, the department would have _her_ in analysis, if not in a straitjacket.

Meanwhile back in the alley, warm and fuzzy had segued into spent and breathless by way of hot and sweaty. When the bike was grounded once more, Nick nudged Maura who was still planted firmly in his lap though holding on much more weakly than moments before. In fact she was halfway to asleep on his shoulder. Vampire sex was not geared for "quickies", though he'd managed to restrain his enthusiasm (and thirst) enough not to knock her out completely. In Maura what passed for "afterglow" was usually a long exhausted sleep. For Nick what passed for a "quickie" usually consumed the better part of an hour. But tonight the constraints of time and place forced some unaccustomed self-control. Maura moved off of Nick reluctantly as he pulled a black silk scarf from his inside pocket. "Here," he wrapped it around her neck as stylishly as possible to hide the not-yet-faded wounds and very mortal-style hickey that surrounded them. He pressed her down on the seat and pulled her forward with him as he rose. "Might as well not stain the leather," and she realized he was cleaning up the seat with her butt and smacked him in the chest. "Pig."

"Hey, at least they won't see the stains on black," Nick gave one of her legs a light brush with his hand and smoothed her tunic, straightening the hem. "Hope the draft isn't too bad."

Maura shook her head in disbelief and covered her face with both hands. "I just had psycho al fresco sex with a vampire on an Italian motorcycle." She looked around her as if for the first time. "In a sleazy back alley."

"Don't tell me," Nick teased as he led her to the door of the club, "I've just fulfilled a lifelong fantasy." He was rewarded by Maura seizing him around the waist and pulling him back hard against her.

"You've established a new one, you smartass."

He leaned his head back and turned to tell her, as they returned to the club, "Always glad to spice up your humdrum existence."

Upon returning to the bar they learned most everyone had gone home except for the captain, who was thanking an obviously overheated Janette, and Angela Johnson, who looked as if she were recovering from a bad acid trip.

Angela was struck by the marked contrast in the appearance of the "guilty couple" as they approached: Maura (whose neck was draped in a scarf she hadn't noticed before) was sweaty, breathless, and very pale and seemed to be holding onto Nick's arm for support as much as affection. Nick, on the other hand, was flushed but utterly calm, not even breathing heavily. Maura looked as if she'd run for blocks with a bad case of the flu, and Nick as if he'd just wakened fresh from a sleep in the sun. It was all very strange. Janette's lipstick, she'd also noticed, was perfect though there seemed to be a smear of deeper red she'd missed just under the point of her chin.

"Amanda? I've gotta be going," Angela called out a little unsteadily, then turned to Nick and Maura. "Thank you for thinking to have the captain invite me… it's been a very, ah, _entertaining_ evening."

"See, we know how to loosen up without medical attention," Nick assured her with a grin.

And how, Angela thought to herself. As she turned to go LaCroix appeared from nowhere. As always.

"Madame doctor, you're leaving our little soiree?"

She was troubled by the inability to remember their earlier conversation. She certainly hadn't drunk much, but still… maybe it was the unaccustomed crowd and music that had distracted her. "Yes, Lucien, I'm rather worn out." She extended her hand, "It was a pleasure to meet you and your friends," regardless of what a strange bunch you are, she added silently. She'd decided to believe that her imagination had gotten the better of her regarding her little "surprises" in the alley and the hallway. Overwork, unfamiliar atmosphere and people, sure, as she looked into the deep eyes of the tall stranger she reached the conclusion that nothing at all out of the ordinary had happened here tonight. Nothing at all. It was her eyes playing tricks in the dimness, that's all. This gentleman's smile was very soothing, she thought, as if he were reaching inside and calming her (if only she knew).

Her comfortable fog was split by LaCroix's howl of pain as he clutched the hand he'd suddenly withdrawn from hers. Was that a curl of smoke rising from between his fingers? Everyone jumped.

"Nothing, it's nothing," LaCroix hastened to cover even as he raged inside against the woman before him. "I believe I scratched myself on your jewelry."

Angela raised her right hand in surprise, "I didn't think the jeweler had left any sharp corners." Amanda and Maura leaned in to look closer – and LaCroix, Janette, and Nick shrank back as one – as she held up her right hand to reveal a ring fashioned of a gold crucifix bent into a circle. "It was my grandmother's… I'm not much of a Catholic but she left it to me so I had it made into something of a keepsake I could wear." She was obviously taken aback by LaCroix's dramatic reaction to what had to have been a very minor irritation. If only she knew.

"How nice," LaCroix offered with a weak, cold smile. "If you'll excuse me I'll take my leave," and he hastily left, still gripping the right hand that everyone but Amanda and Angela now realized must bear a nasty scorch mark that would take an hour or so to heal.

The captain announced, "Let's get going, Angela."

Dr. Johnson tried not to agree too hastily, but she beat the captain out the door.

"Poor LaCroix," Maura sighed.

"You don't mean that, cherie," Janette scolded mildly.

"Nah. But it's Valentine's Day, I'm supposed to be warm and fuzzy right?"

"You've done very well, I must say." Nick glanced at his watch with a knowing smile. "And it hasn't been Valentine's Day for nearly three hours now."

Maura rolled her eyes and feigned a shudder of relief. "Thank god. I couldn't keep it up for much longer."

"You're not the one who has to," Nick smirked as Janette smiled discreetly to herself. She knew, of course, exactly what had gone on out in the alley. She, and Miklos, and Vachon, and every vampire within a mile knew. Their telepathic connections kicked in whenever excitement was high, and not just in the presence of danger.

"Well, Nicolas, I hope yours and Mr. Schanke's plan has succeeded. In any case, your Dr. Johnson has had ample opportunity to witness you and your coworkers in all of the glory of your… what is that quaint phrase… 'primary relationships'?" Janette was more right than she knew, and for far more reasons than any of them would have wanted to know.

When Nick came home from work at nearly 2am the following Tuesday morning he brought better news than he expected to have.

"Angela Johnson has transferred her study to another precinct."

"You're kidding. She wasn't even finished shrinking _yours_. What gives?"

He shrugged. "Dunno. Captain announced that she'd concluded ours wasn't a 'viable source for pilot project analysis'."

"Hey, don't look a gift shrinky-dink in the mouth, I say."

He agreed readily, and they settled in for the morning to snuggle on the sofa and watch a movie. "_Anything _but a romance," Maura begged.

"How about a biker movie?" Nick suggested with a leer.

Meanwhile, from a studio elsewhere in the city, the Night Crawler smiled as he congratulated a listener for making the right decision. Some groups, he told her, were better not to examine too closely. When the phone line disengaged he leaned back in his chair and smiled in satisfaction.

"Objectivity is for amateurs," he announced imperiously to the empty air.


End file.
